A Guide to Collaboration for IEP Teams

With so many complex, challenging, and emotionally charged decisions involved, participating in an IEP meeting can seem like navigating through a minefield. But now there's a practical guide to managing these meetings with a high level of awareness, safety, and confidence. Developed for administrators, teachers, resource professionals, and parents, this skills-based book will help you work as a unified team to design, review, and modify IEPs for children with special education needs. This resource fully addresses

• Effective meeting management. Discover how to promote and maintain the collaboration that leads to consensus. Highlight the characteristics of model IEP teams and meetings. Have a comprehensive guide to conducting successful meetings, from setting ground rules and managing time to planning agendas and accomplishing goals.
• Principled negotiation. Apply a proven approach to building consensus while minimizing conflict. Learn how to use team members' underlying interests to move from competition into cooperation, while maintaining a strong and positive team spirit.
• The emotional side. Examine the central role of feelings as motivators of behavior. Learn how to turn strong emotions into powerful allies, and discover the simple keys that help team members communicate with respect and understanding, work through anger, and maintain diplomacy.
• Conflict prevention. Discover 25 clear, specific, and practical alternatives for resolving conflict before it escalates into debilitating tensions or legal action.

Written in a user-friendly and conversational style, this much-needed book is supplemented with checklists, outlines, diagrams, and specific examples to make the complex simple. Incorporating the feedback and suggestions of hundreds of special education professionals, this book will be of invaluable help to you and your fellow team members as you work together to create the best possible IEPs for the children in your care.

Nicholas R.M. Martin is a conflict resolution consultant who lives near Fort Worth, Texas, with this wife, Kathleen, and daughter, Miya. Nick is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Hartford, and his educationsl background is in clinical psychology. After many years as a juvenile court psychologist, mental health counselor, and dispute mediator, he has come to focus increasingly on team building and conflict prevention. A considerable part of his more recent work has involved skills-based training for those working in special education. Nick has been authorized to mediate for several court jurisdictions and serves as a contract mediator for the U.S. Postal Service. He has been providing highly acclaimed and practically oriented training for more than 25 years. He has also taught dispute resolution at the graduate level. Nick is the author of An Operator's Manual for Successful Living (DeVorss, 1988) and Strengthening Relationships When Our Children Have Special Needs (Future Horizons, 2004). He has also published numerous newspaper and journal articles, some of which can be found at his website, www.4accord.com.